Those are ones I think are the worst: the ones that are closed minded.

Everyone comes in with diffirent backgrounds, diffirent natural ability, diffirent body types, or past injuries. It's the willingness to learn that makes someone a good student, just as it's the willingness to teach that makes a good teacher. Some people come in and are so uncoordinated that they can't shuffle forward without leaving half their body stuck to the mat. What's beautiful, to me at least, is when these people keep coming, and keep getting better. For them, something as simple as shuffling forward and back, is improvment.

Others come in with past training, and can pull off beautiful throws that they learned ten years ago. However, when they're taught new techniques, they question so much that they end up just using their old body mechanics again and again. Somewhere along the way these people lost the beginers mindset and until they regain it, they'll never progress.

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"Seek not to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought."--Basho

I was in Chito-ryu for only 3 years, but in that time I made some friends and had a good time. I switched clubs for lots of reasons and when the next tournament came around this is what happened.....

My best friend from my old club almost broke my nose in a sparring match, among other things because my previous sensei didn't like that I had switched clubs. That, IMHO is the worst student out there, the one that is so fanatical about winning and 'dealing with traitors to the club' (yes, that was actually said ) Augh, crazy people.

* had two students whose parents didn't want to pay for day care. They would show up at class and stay the whole day. At one point they came without uniforms even and just sat outside. We asked, are you doing class? "NO, our mom just told us to wait here." -- we called and told them we're not qualified or staffed or paid to babysit their children. If they abandon them again at our front door, we would call child protective services. It worked.

Second one isn't really a learning problem, it's a behavioral one:

* We had a 13 yr old student who would periodically defecate on the mat. Yes I said DEFECATE on the mat. We would just find it there and not know who did it. One day during class we saw this kid turn, shake his leg, and drop a "poo" on the mat out the bottom of his gi pants. My instructor lost it. I swear there was steam coming out of his ears. He took him in the office and promptly excused him from ever taking classes again.

edit- in retrospect, I guess they were both behavioral problems. ~Corwin

Edited by JMWcorwin (08/24/0701:38 PM)

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There are no PERFECT techniques, only perfect execution for the situation at hand.
~Corwin

I'm currently 7th kyu in Shitoryu Karate, got a long way to go before coming close to any black belt in my dojo but I still love the thrill of kumite.

So anyways there was one time where this punkish looking guy joined the dojo, and he had this really obnoxious look. Excused himself during the idoshiki, came to class only after we greeted the senseis, and I caught him picking on the younger students a few times. He's prolly one of those guys who's always looking for a fight and thinks they're tough [censored], which is common in my country.

I finally got a chance to spar with him during one of the free sparring sessions, used some of the advanced footwork techniques they taught during the kumite division class to sidestep his punches, then when he tried a mawashi (which didn't look like one by the way), I bypassed it and landed a triple reverse punch right smack on his solar plexus.

Long nails guy. We're doing judo, this guy has toenails and fingernails that could slice bread in half. Cut your nails dude!! In the middle of class he wants to talk about anime and geocaching. He has a full head of grey hair.

Girl in the kids class screams all the time. She screams everytime she is pinned or thrown for about 5minutes. Please stay home. Her dad just sits there and never says a word to her while the instructors are trying to figure her out.

One dude shows up dirty all the time with a gi that reeks of BO. Dude! Jump in the river or something atleast!! Pew!

Another guy doesn't know the meaning or light randori, or even practice throws. No matter how compliant you are, he just needs to plant you hard....all the time,everytime!

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The2nd ammendment, it makes all the others possible. <///<

I had my wrist cut by a guy's toenail back in 1994. They were like eagle tallons! It was at a demo and at the time I really didn't notice it. After we got off stage, a mom from the audience came running up to me with a band-aid telling me that she could see blood on my sleeve from her seat. It wasn't too bad but it could have been worse had his nail been just a smidgen over to the left as the scar is right next to one of the veins in my wrist. Yeah some people I want to give a pedicure gift certificate to them as a "just because" gift.

Casey

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"It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first."- Ronald Reagan

I wish I could tell a story, but I don't have any, however, I did enjoy reading you guys stories, quite interesting, sucks that this forum isn't more active being that it has over 20k members....Well this section at least.

Oh i think everyone has a story here, when i was still white belt my sensei told me about this one loco dude who came to the dojo, and insisted fighting with the black belts, on his second or third day he decided to pair up with a 2nd dan black belt lady, who was half his height and weight, he decided itll be a good idea to go full out, and pin her against the wall and broke her ribs, in such a way that the bone stuck through her breast :|. Of course she was taken to the hospital to get treated, but all the other black belts kept him there forcefully when he saw he caused serious trouble. He started off fighting one of my senseis and had to go through 10 of them untill he reached our head instructor (whos one of the highest ranked karateka in Africa), who and i quote "took care of him". I would rather not wanna know the details, but he never came back.